WELCOME TO THE BLOG
This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
I remove comments containing expletives and not in English.

We should have known by January 2017 we were in for a rocky ride with truth and facts when we elected a TV star for president who created and lived in his own reality. Remember when Donald Trump told us not to believe our eyes when pictures of President Obama’s inauguration attendees were shown side by side with pictures taken at Trump’s inauguration . Obama’s crowd size was visually larger yet he still claimed through his spokesperson his was the biggest inauguration crowd in history. A year and a half later, he is still asking you not to believe your very eyes. "Just remember: what you’re seeing and what you're reading is not what’s happening.," he told a VFW audience this July. That Donald Trump has problems with truth and facts is an understatement.
Trump’s spokespeople have had their challenges when they have been confronted with data and overwhelming evidence that contradicts what the President has claimed. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway will go down in history for calling evidence to the contrary “alternative facts” and Trump’s newest personal attorney, Rudy Guiliani is famous for saying that “truth isn’t truth” in testimonies to law enforcement.
Of course, that is what jury trials are all about, to find what is true. The recent trial of Paul Manafort was very instructive. The paper work was overwhelming evidence enough to find him guilty and to qualify Manafort for jail time. Sometimes just being confronted with the evidence is enough. Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen found tape recordings were strong enough proof of his wrongdoing, motivating him to cop a plea and to implicate Trump as the one who directed him to cover up and run hush money through a corporation.
Too bad we cannot subject politician’s untruth tales to juries, too. It is not a crime to lie from the podium though it is a crime to lie under oath. Donald Trump has told some public untruths lately to bolster his most important policies. To rev up his crowd, he still often claims illegal immigrants were causing more crime than those who were born here, citing figures that did not prove his point, per independent , non-partisan Factcheck.org. This fact checker concluded “ the available research that estimates the relationship between illegal immigration and crime generally shows an association with lower crime rates.” At the Naval Academy graduation the President orated about his foreign policy that "We are respected again, I can tell you that," However an early 2018 Gallup poll found median approval of U.S. leadership dropped substantially in all but a few of the 65 countries and areas they polled, now at 30%, down from 48% in 2016 . While Trump deserves credit for continuing a trend of economic growth, he boasted that he was the first in years to show a quarter’s GDP growth of 4%. That figure was an easy target for fact checker Politifact.com since there was government data showed President Obama had achieved that record four times while he was president.
There is a pattern here. Whenever the facts fail to support his oratory and tweets , Trump and his supporters thump the table loudly, repeat debunked talking points, call challengers bad names, uninformed, or unbelievable solely because they consider anything a lie that comes from who they see as the enemy. It works for his base. 91% of strong Trump supporters polled by CBS Battle Ground States trust Trump for accurate information over family and friends, and mainstream media. However, a recent NBC/You Gov poll found 60% of the American people say Trump is usually dishonest . “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”, is a folk wisdom saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln. As with all of my columns, data, polls, and fact sources cited are posted and linked at www.mufticforumblog.blogspot.com
as below:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jul/27/fact-checking-donald-trumps-points-about-economy/
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385779-nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-say-trump-is-dishonest-poll
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22547037/donald-trump-orwellian-truth-reality-eyes-ears/
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22600827/donald-trump-supporters-believe-the-media/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/225761/world-approval-leadership-drops-new-low.aspx
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/the-facts-on-crowd-size/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited

Update 10/13/18: Israeli firm asked to interfere in the GOP nomination process to help Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/08/donald-trump-2016-campaign-rick-gates-israeli-help-report

President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, has just issued a warning about Iran, North Korea and China tampering with our November midterm elections. The shoe is now on the other foot since both Iran and China have reasons to help Trump’s opponents in 2018. The lesson we should learn from this is opposing interference by any foreign governments in our election process needs to be countered vigorously no matter who the perpetrators are or who they harm or help. American elections ought to be decided by Americans, not by foreign adversaries, but when it comes to the Russians, GOP and the administration still fiddle while Rome burns.
Until now, the Trump administration has either been permissive toward past and future Russian manipulation or it has dismissed evidence of Russian activities in 2016 which helped Donald Trump to be elected. Iran and China are not friends of the Trump administration. Iran and China can now take a page from the successful Russian attack methods and use the same techniques against Trump backed candidates that the Russians got away with. In fact, Russians are still getting away with it now, in 2018, per our security services.
It is still the policy of the White House to either deny or obstruct probes into Russian attacks or to fail to take leadership to block such attacks. Individual security agencies are doing what they can and the private social media sector is beginning to step up to the plate . Last week Google took down 58 Iran related web sites, following the lead of Twitter, but self policing by social media using their own arbitrary standards has also met resistance from those who advocate first amendment rights in the press.
In a press conference August 2, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, flanked by representatives of our intelligence services , warned that Russia was once again interfering in the 2018 November elections. In response, President Trump issued an edict to security services to give counter measures a priority and then at a rally in Pennsylvania that very evening called the Russia thing a “hoax”, undermining his own position. So which is it, Donald Trump. Russian interference a hoax and a witch hunt or a threat to our democracy dependent on elections we can trust? And is it OK for your loyal supporters to consider Iranian and Chinese interference to be OK, too?
The GOP Congress has taken its cue from the White House and their constituents, refusing to give extra funding to states to harden their election systems to protect them from foreign hackers. They are listening to their constituents who have swallowed the Trump administration’s Cool aid . A Yahoo Finance/SurveyMonkey poll of 2,509 Americans conducted July 25-27 show that 40% of Republicans are OK with Russian meddling and 11% in fact welcome it. 75% of Republicans polled by Ipsos July 16-17 believe the Mueller probe resulted from FBI bias and 30% of Republicans approved of the Mueller investigation. Mueller has found no witches; just six felons who pleaded or were found guilty, not counting those related to the Michael Cohen case.
With the prospect of Iran and China supporting Trump’s opposition candidates in 2018 and 2020, the shoe will be on the other foot. One can imagine that Iran will increase anger, turnout, and identify through US voter rolls those likely to oppose Administration’s saber rattling and sanctions policy. Chinese would likely target those in the US agricultural sector who have felt the sting of retaliatory Chinese tariffs raised against their products soybeans, corn, pork and beef.
A warning to the foolish: what goes around comes around.
(poll sources: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/republicans-want-russia-influence-us-elections-202847050.html. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/how-trumps-witch-hunt-tweets-create-an-illusory-truth/566693/

This falls under the "shoe could be on the other foot" category. Those Trump loyalists who think that it is OK for Russia to interfere in our elections, ignore the danger to themselves in future elections. What if Iran, angered by Donald Trump's verbal attacks on Iran, or China, ticked off at his trade wars,, undertake using the same techniques used by the Russians to help Trump get elected would now use the same techniques to support Trump's opponents? This is not fantasy, or science fiction. This is entirely possible and is happening now. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/google-deletes-58-accounts-with-ties-to-iran-from-youtube-and-other-sites.html "Google deletes 58 accounts with ties to Iran from YouTube and other sites

The update follows similar take-downs by Facebook and Twitter, which earlier this week revealed calculated misinformation campaigns by Russian and Iranian accounts.

The company "identified and terminated" 39 English-language YouTube accounts, 13 Google+ accounts and six Blogger blogs that were found to be engaged in "politically motivated phishing."

The accounts were found to have ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting."

A recent poll revealed that 40% of . Republicans are OK with Russian meddling in 2016; 11% in fact welcome it.. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/republicans-want-russia-influence-us-elections-202847050.html

and 75% of Republicans believe that Robert Mueller's investigation is a witch hunt. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/how-trumps-witch-hunt-tweets-create-an-illusory-truth/566693/ What are the chances Trump loyalists will desert him? The guilty verdict in the first Manafort trial ( Trump's campaign manager) and the guilty plea of his lawyer Michael Cohen who also fingered Trump as directing his actions in criminally violating election laws are not enough to change minds of the President's loyalists. After all, Donald Trump said, campaign election violations are "no big deal". It was a big deal in the Nixon impeachment, but these are different times. The Mueller report may kick up the criminal wrong doings to a really big deal if Trump's associates and family or even Trump himself reveal overwhelming evidence that someone committed treason or conspired with foreign adversaries to break laws (euphemism for treason). That may convince some of the 40% GOP believers that loyalty may have been misplaced. ) or it may not. Much depends whether some tape or enough credible witnesses tie the conspiracy to Trump's direction. It is easy to understand why Trump has attempted to destroy of the credibility of the Mueller probe and in the Fox interview on August 22 he hinted at firing AG Sessions supervising the Mueller probe after the November elections. No doubt that timing would apply to the firing of his deputy, Rod Rosenstein. We are back to the fundamental Watergate question, "what did he know and when did he know it" and it was not until the tapes provided the final proof.https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/google-deletes-58-accounts-with-ties-to-iran-from-youtube-and-other-sites.html
,

What is the greatest danger to the rule of law was illustrated in the hold out of one juror in jury deliberations of the recent trilal of Paul Manafort in which he was found guilty of 8 of 18 counts. The Manafort defense counted on some jurors like her to get their client off the hook. At least, that was one explanation for their not putting on witnesses and a rebuttal of the facts set forth in the paper documents.by the prosecution. She viewed the Trump line that the reason Manafort was prosecuted for tax and bank fraud was because a guilty finding with a long jail term would cause him to flip and become evidence used by Mueller. Therefore the evidence was not as important as political loyalty, though eventually she did agree the evidence was beyond a reasonable doubt in eight counts.

This shows that Trump's attempt to prejudice the jury pool (the voters in northern Virginia) with this line almost worked. The name of the president was not uttered due to a judge's instructions and agreement among defense and prosecution before the trial began, though the connection did show up in the documents. While the holdout juror did come around to agreeing on 8 of the counts, her political assessment was probably correct, but it shows that Trump's devotees are inclined to, dismiss any obvious evidence of a crime by the accused in their political loyalty to their Leader. . As Trump himself noted, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still be loyal.. This is the greatest danger to the rule of law., At least in this first Manafort trial, the rule of law won out...for now. The final outcome depends upon the President's future actions.

The second greatest danger to the rule of law would be if Trump pardoned Manafort on the basis that in his own judgment, he was treated unfairly, ignoring the final jury verdict, the fundamental foundation of our legal system....the jury of peers..

Trump needs to respect the jury's findings, but if he wants to reward Manafort's loyalty for keeping his mouth shut on the Russian connection, commuting his sentence would be the better approach., though it could be seen as witness tampering or obstruction of justice if offered in advance. . The second trial yet scheduled for September is about Manafort's Russian connection in interfering in the November 2016 election, though the jury pool in Washington DC is viewed to be less sympathetic to the President. If the trial proceeds, and Manafort does not flip to become witness for the prosecution, offering either pardon or commuting the sentence in advance would be overt tampering with both the jury pool and the defendant.

.Assuming the president could be exempted from criminal prosecution while sitting in office, this could become another article of impeachment. The chance again that impeachment would ever result in his removal of office depends upon a 2/3 vote of Senators, highly unlikely to happen unless the spineless GOP Senate sees their poll numbers collapse. This happening is dependent on whether Mueller's report is so damning of the president himself that even some supporters get turned off. Trump is correct as he stated in an August 22 interview on Fox. about the Michael Cohen guilty plea that campaign finance violations nd his alleged direction of Cohen are "not a big deal". What he is implying this was not serious enough to motivate his supporters to abandon him. Covering up the Watergate break in and using campaign funds in order to influence an upcoming election got Nixon the beginning of the impeachment process and changed minds of Senators, but these are different times.

Cohen did provide a recording of a conversation with the President whether the President authorized the hush money to keep the two women quiet because of concern about the impact on the election and therefore was a campaign contribution that was was undeclared. .

What is the greatest danger to the rule of law was illustrated in the hold out of one juror in jury deliberations of the recent trilal of Paul Manafort in which he was found guilty of 8 of 18 counts. The Manafort defense counted on at least one like her to get their client off the hook. At least, that was one explanation for their not putting on witnesses and a rebuttal of the facts set forth in the paper documents.by the prosecution. She viewed the Trump line that the reason Manafort was prosecuted for tax and bank fraud was because a guilty finding with a long jail term would cause him to flip and become evidence for Mueller. Therefore the evidence was not as important as political loyalty. and therefore she had reasonable doubt of the evidence.

This shows that Trump's attempt to prejudice the jury pool (the voters in northern Virginia) with this line almost worked. The name of the president was not uttered due to a judge's instructions and agreement among defense and prosecution before the trial began, though the connection did show up in the documents. Her political assessment was probably correct, but it shows that Trump's devotees will dismiss any obvious evidence of a crime by the accused in their political loyalty to their Leader. As Trump himself noted, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his supporters would still be loyal. This is the greatest danger to the rule of law., At least in this first Manafort trial, the rule of law won out...for now. The final outcome depends upon the President's future actions.

The second greatest danger to the rule of law would be if Trump pardoned Manafort on the basis that in his own judgment, he was treated unfairly, ignoring the final jury verdict, the fundamental foundation of our legal system....the jury of peers..

Trump needs to respect the jury's findings, but if he wants to reward Manafort's loyalty for keeping his mouth shut on the Russian connection, commuting his sentence would be the better approach., though it could be seen as witness tampering if offered in advance. . The second trial yet scheduled for September is about Manafort's Russian connection in interfering in the November 2016 election, though the jury pool in Washington DC is viewed to be less sympathetic to the President. If the trial proceeds, and Manafort does not flip to become witness for the prosecution, offering either pardon or commuting the sentence in advance would be overt tampering with both the jury pool and the defendant.

.Assuming the president could be exempted from criminal prosecution while sitting in office, this could become another article of impeachment. The chance again that impeachment would ever result in his removal of office depends upon a 2/3 vote of Senators, highly unlikely to happen unless the spineless GOP Senate sees their poll numbers collapse. This happening is dependent on whether Mueller's report is so damning of the president himself that even some supporters get turned off. Trump is correct as he stated in an August 22 interview on Fox. about the Michael Cohen guilty plea that campaign finance violations nd his alleged direction of Cohen are "not a big deal". What he is implying this was not serious enough to motivate his supporters to abandon him. Covering up the Watergate break in and using campaign funds in order to influence an upcoming election got Nixon the beginning of the impeachment process and changed minds of Senators, but these are different times.

What is the greatest danger to the rule of law was illustrated in the hold out of one juror in jury deliberations of the recent trilal of Paul Manafort in which he was found guilty of 8 of 18 counts. The Manafort defense counted on at least one like her to get their client off the hook. At least, that was one explanation for their not putting on witnesses and a rebuttal of the facts set forth in the paper documents.by the prosecution. She viewed the Trump line that the reason Manafort was prosecuted for tax and bank fraud was because a guilty finding with a long jail term would cause him to flip and become evidence for Mueller. Therefore the evidence was not as important as political loyalty. and therefore she had reasonable doubt of the evidence.

This shows that Trump's attempt to prejudice the jury pool (the voters in northern Virginia) with this line almost worked. The name of the president was not uttered due to a judge's instructions and agreement among defense and prosecution before the trial began, though the connection did show up in the documents. Her political assessment was probably correct, but it shows that Trump's devotees are inclined to dismiss any obvious evidence of a crime by the accused. . As Trump himself noted, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and he would not lose voters. This is the greatest danger to the rule of law., At least in this first Manafort trial, the rule of law won out...for now. The final outcome depends upon the President's future actions.

The second greatest danger to the rule of law would be if Trump pardoned Manafort on the basis that in his own judgment, he was treated unfairly, ignoring the final jury verdict, the fundamental foundation of our legal system....the jury of peers..

Trump needs to respect the jury's findings, but if he wants to reward Manafort's loyalty for keeping his mouth shut on the Russian connection, commuting his sentence would be the better approach., though it could be seen as witness tampering if offered in advance. . The second trial yet scheduled for September is about Manafort's Russian connection in interfering in the November 2016 election, though the jury pool in Washington DC is viewed to be less sympathetic to the President. If the trial proceeds, and Manafort does not flip to become witness for the prosecution, offering either pardon or commuting the sentence in advance would be overt tampering with both the jury pool and the defendant.

.Assuming the president could be exempted from criminal prosecution while sitting in office, this could become another article of impeachment. The chance again that impeachment would ever result in his removal of office depends upon a 2/3 vote of Senators, highly unlikely to happen unless the spineless GOP Senate sees their poll numbers collapse. This happening is dependent on whether Mueller's report is so damning of the president himself that even some supporters get turned off. Trump is correct as he stated in an August 22 interview on Fox. about the Michael Cohen guilty plea that campaign finance violations nd his alleged direction of Cohen are "not a big deal". What he is implying this was not serious enough to motivate his supporters to abandon him. Covering up the Watergate break in and using campaign funds in order to influence an upcoming election got Nixon the beginning of the impeachment process and changed minds of Senators, but these are different times.

Saturday, August 18, 2018

A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News August 21-22, 2018.https://www.skyhinews.com/news/opinion/muftic-trumps-unique-place-in-american-history/The character of Donald Trump will be a
subject of biographies for years to come. It will not be his economic and
social policies that will be highlighted. Never have we had a president like
him who takes revenge on those who do not bow down to him personally by
repurposing presidential powers to punish them. His targets have been members of his own
political party or any establishment within his own government that challenges
him, those who put loyalty to the rule of law over loyalty to him, and
especially the media.

In the past couple of weeks such actions
reached a crescendo, motivating those with enough guts to push back. Taking him
on were Democrats and Republicans, independents, military and civilians. Three
hundred newspapers nationwide published editorials supporting freedom of the
press, vowing not to be cowed and objecting to Trump’s campaign to discredit
all media who dared criticize him as ‘fake news” or “the enemy of the
people”.

Donald Trump’s use of certain presidential
tools to punish and cripple the power of the disloyal to protect his presidency
and to reward loyalty is unique. Whether repurposing these tools is also abuse
of power is yet to be determined. He has
dangled his power of pardons to reward those “very good” guys” who maintain
their loyalty to him in advance of criminal trials concerning the Russian
matter. He had illustrated his pardon
power by pardoning others earlier and reaffirmed again his support of his
former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, before and even during the trial.

UPDATE August 24, 2018: Many of the federal actions of tax fraud and money laundering have been farmed out to other federal districts, such as the Southern District of New York, which means firing Mueller would not stop those actions. Only the Manafort case remains in the Mueller hands. Firing Jeff Sessions and replacing him with a Trump loyalist that would be able to destroy the Mueller probe would have happened August 23 as Sessions reaffirmed his support of the integrity of his Department of Justice on his way to meeting Trump, basically revolting against Trump's attacks against him and a deep state. Sessions is still there much to the support of his fellow GOP Senators, which he once also was but the conflict may be epic. Expect that firing to take place after November because before then, it would be viewed as an obstruction of justice. In the meantime, the guilty plea of Trump's lawyer .Michael Cohen, has opened a can of worms...implicating Trump's direction in the illegal method used to pay hush money to Trump's liaisons that would have come to light a few weeks before the November 16 election. Worse for Trump is that the Cohen documents filed in court contained information that now has sparked New York state and local District Attorney in Manhattan have begun probes into the Trump organization and Trump Foundations which would put the Trump kids in legal jeopardy. Trump pardon offers do not work
in state
cases.

This past week he discovered another tool:
yanking security clearances from those who could challenge him. Never had a
president used such powers for purely political reasons. He revoked the
security clearance of former CIA chief John Brennan for” erratic conduct and
behavior”, a euphemism for being an outspoken critic of the president’s policy
of speaking no evil of the Russians or their actions in the 2016 elections.
Trump then issued an “enemies” list of nine more he threatened with the same
action, all of whom were connected to the Mueller probe into Trump’s Russian
connections. In response, every former
CIA director since 1966 signed a letter in protest of his threatening their
free speech, and 60 more former intel officers charged such political litmus loyalty
tests were harmful to national security missions. Retired Admiral William McRaven, who directly
supervised the bin Laden take down, asked to be put on that enemies list as a
badge of honor. 175 more former national security officials join in protest agreeing

“Our firm belief is that the country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied”

Trump is not the first politician to use a
bully pulpit to curry support of racists, but he is a master of the old and new
art. Using twitter and mass rallies, this president sets the example and
inspires the worst in our country to speak out openly in disrespect and hatred
of migrants, immigrants and those of color.
Some have struck back. White nationalists, a group Trump had called “also some fine people”, to
march in support of racism in memory of last year’s Charlottesville, were overwhelmed by crowds of demonstrators
rising in support of civil rights. A former Trump TV apprentice and fired White
House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman, an African American,” blew the whistle”
on the president’s racism, hinting Trump knew in advance of Russian campaign election
meddling, and she provided a tape recording of Trump’s family offering what she
considered a high paid hush money non-job after she was fired. Trump responded
with threats of legal action and called her a “dog”. Her defiant answer: releasing more tapes she
made while in the White House.

However, he also thought managing meant opening up federal forestest to logging and that the way to prevent wildfires was to cut trees . Zinke " blasted environmental groups for blocking or curbing logging operations on public lands.

:Zinke is one of many science deniers in the Trump cabinet.
The word global warming/climate change is prohibited in the White House
so they have to come up with dumb ideas like this or claim the Carr fire
cannot be foughtbecause of no water. (reservoirs are full).
There is a certain logic: no trees: no wildfires
For the list of science deniers in the Trump adminstration
(3% of scientists agree with them on global warming),https://thinkprogress.org/trump-cabinet-climate-deniers-2f…/
Federal money has helped pay for cutting trees around areas
of urban/suburban developments to form firebreaks, making those
vulnerable areas of urban interface able to be defended by firefighters
and it has been very effective in saving a subdivision in Silverthorn
and in Grand Lake. Extensive firebreaks have been built
around Winter Park/Fraser. The logging operations have created jobs
around the county, though extensive logging in public lands
is a very different purpose and impact.

Here I am sitting in my living room above
Fraser, Colorado with my view of Byer’s Peak some 10 miles away across the
Fraser River Valley disappearing in a smoky haze and watching television reports
of the devastating record breaking Carr /Mendocino Complex fire in northern California. Colorado wildfires' smoke plumes blowing my way are fueled by
beetle killed trees the like of which I have never seen in my fifty years
of full and part time living in the valley. Does it have anything to do with global
warming or climate change?Yes. There is
a relationship, but politics color our opinions and actions and it depends upon
whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or a Green. Partisan views get in the
way of believing scientific evidence and shaping effective and rational policies. The Trump administration is the leader in denying the science. A March 2018 Gallup poll found that Democrats take
global warming seriously, Republicans are skeptical with 69% of Republicans say
global warming is exaggerated.With a warming globe, whether wildfires are caused by lightening as two near my home were, or were started by human activity, the problem is the increase in fuel . If you ever tried to get a campfire or a fireplace logs catching fire, you know dry fuel ignites easier, burns hotter, spreads faster. Global warming temperatures cause early snow melt and ground and foliage to dry out in California .In Colorado, beetle killed gray ghosts of lodgepole pines occupy much of the mountain landscape and fuel many wildfires. Per the US Department of Agriculture, warming winters have not killed off the beetles as they once did and dense growth makes it easy for insects to infect the next tree. World meteorologists agree that rates of wildfires burning forests have not been seen for at least the last 10,000 years. In recent years, producers of coal, oil, and gas (fossil fuels) have poured massive amounts of money into GOP candidates and elections. To promote an anti-climate change mantra. the
Trump administration not only pulled out of the Paris Climate accord, it has
purged any White House reference to global warming/climate change.August 5, Donald Trump ignorantly tried to
claim California wildfires were caused by a environmental policy engineered water shortage, but reservoirs were
full. In addition, the Trump administration has filled policy making bodies with
fossil fuel executives who either deny global warming is occurring or contend that
fossil fuels are not the cause. His pro fossil fuel appointees have been taking taking steps to weaken rules regarding coal powered plant and future automobile emissions standards.

Some believe global warming is just a natural cycle. No. It is the speed and extremes that are unnatural. It is a data proven fact that the globe has rapidly heated up by two degrees since the industrial revolution began 150 years ago and predictions are the earth will heat up two degrees more by the end of this century. Per NASA, 97% of scientists agree it is"" extremely likely" the warming is caused by emissions by humans. Gases act like a greenhouse roof and keep heat from released to space ,so the earth warms. Per the Environmental Protection Agency, the gases released by burning fossil fuels are the "largest source "of these greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide). There are those who call this "fake science", but Kate Marvel, writing for the magazine Scientific American’s blogsummed up the scientific community rebuttal to the science deniers ” ....overturning that understanding would take a radical paradigm shift that would call into question much of what we know about physics and chemistry."

“Noah Deffenbaugh researches the connection between climate and extreme weather as a professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University. He said the longer fire season in California is related to climate change because global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions has increased the average temperature by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We're getting warmer and warmer conditions around the globe but certainly here in California and in the western United States we're getting earlier melting of snowpack," Diffenbaugh told ABC News' Brad Mielke on the "Start Here" podcast. "That means that when those warm conditions happen in the summer and fall all the vegetation is even more dried out and that means that when lightning strikes when a spark from a from a car or a campfire hits the ground that the vegetation is more dried out there's more fuel available."https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/climate-change-make-wildfires-spread-factor/

Observers believe the Green vote in 2016 helped the GOP win by contributing to Democratic party losses in at least three key rust belt states and the recent indictments of Russian’s manipulation of US social media showed they supported the Greens to divert votes from Democrats.In the August 5 Ohio District 12 Congressional special election, Greens garnered 1% of the vote, enough to harm the Democratic candidates’ margin in a razor thin result. The Greens’ own intentions are inadvertently helping “the other side’.

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com